Bibliographie
Primary Sources
Ibn Ǧubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, trans. Ronald Broadhurst, London, Jonathan Cape, 1952.
Ibn al-Uḫuwwa, The Maʿālim al-qurba fī aḥkām al-ḥisba, ed. with English summary Reuben Levy, London, Luzac and Cambridge University Press, 1938.
Ṯaʿalibī (al-), The Book of curious and entertaining Information. The Laṭāʼif al-maʿārif of Thaʿālibī, trans. and annotated by C. E. Bosworth, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1968.
Secondary Works
Ahsan, Muhammad, 1979: Social Life under the Abbasids, 170-289 AH, 786-902 AD, London and New York, Longman & Librairie du Liban.
Allan, James, 1973: “Abu’l-Qasim’s treatise on ceramics”, Iran 11, p. 111-120.
Allan, James & Abu Khalaf, Marwan, 2000: “The painted wooden ceiling in the inner ambulatory of the Dome of the Rock”, in Robert Hillenbrand & Sylvia Auld (dir.): Ottoman Jerusalem, the Living City: 1517-1917, London, Altajir World of Islam Trust, p. 465-472.
Auld, Sylvia, 2009a: “The Minbar of Nur al-Din in context”, in Robert Hillenbrand & Sylvie Auld (dir.), Ayyubid Jerusalem: The Holy City in Context, 1187-1250, London, Altajir Trust, p. 72-93.
Auld, Sylvia, 2009b: “The wooden balustrade in the Sakhra”, in Robert Hillenbrand & Sylvie Auld (dir.), Ayyubid Jerusalem: The Holy City in Context, 1187-1250, London, Altajir Trust, p. 94-117.
Baer, Gabriel, 1964: Egyptian Guilds in Modern Times, Jerusalem, The Israel Oriental Society (Oriental Notes and Studies 8).
Baram, Uzi, 2000: “Entangled objects from the Palestinian past: Archaeological perspectives for the Ottoman period, 1500-1900”, in Uzi Baram & Lynda Carroll (dir.), A Historical Archaeology of the Ottoman Empire: Breaking new Ground, Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology, New York and Boston, Plenum, p. 137-159.
Bazantay, Pierre, 1936: Enquête sur lʼartisanat à Antioche, Les états du Levant sous Mandat Français, Beirut, Imprimerie Catholique.
Bloom, Jonathan, 2009: “Woodwork in Syria, Palestine and Egypt during the 12th and 13th centuries”, in Robert Hillenbrand & Sylvie Auld (dir.): Ayyubid Jerusalem: The Holy City in Context, 1187-1250, London, Altajir Trust, p. 129-146.
Commins, David, 1990: Islamic Reform: Politics and social Change in Late Ottoman Syria, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press.
Cuinet, Vital, 1896: Syrie, Liban et Palestine. Géographique, administrative, statistique, descriptive et raisonnée, Paris, Ernest Leroux.
Elgood, Robert, 1995: Firearms of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait, London, I. B. Tauris.
Élisséeff, Nikita, 1956: “Corporations de Damas sous Nūr al-Dīn: Matériaux pour une topographie économique de Damas au xiie siècle”, Arabica 3, 1956, p. 61-79.
Flood, Finbarr, 2000: “The Ottoman windows in the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa mosque”, in Robert Hillenbrand & Sylvia Auld (dir.), Ottoman Jerusalem, the Living City: 1517-1917, London, Altajir World of Islam Trust, p. 431-63.
Floor, Willem, 2006: “The woodworking craft and its products in Iran”, Muqarnas 23, p. 159-89.
Ghabin, Ahmad, 2009: Ḥisba, Arts and Craft in Islam, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz (Arabisch-Islamische Welt in Tradition und Moderne 7).
Goitein, Shlomo, 1983: A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. IV: Daily Life, Berkeley & Los Angeles, University of California Press.
Hillenbrand, Robert, 1999: “Umayyad woodwork in the Aqsa mosque”, in Jeremy Johns (dir.), Bayt al-Maqdis: Jerusalem and early Islam, Oxford, Oxford University Press (Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 9.2), p. 271-310.
Ismail, Adel, 1975-83: Documents diplomatiques et consulaires relatifs à l’histoire du Liban et les pays du Proche-Orient du xviie siècle à nos jours, 49 vol., Beirut, Éditions des oeuvres politiques et historiques.
Ismail, Adel, 1982-1293: Documents diplomatiques et consulaires relatifs à l’histoire du Liban et des pays du Proche-Orient du xviie siècle à nos jours. Première partie: les sources françaises. Correspondance consulaire et commerciale, 6 vol., Beirut, Éditions des œuvres politiques et historiques.
Issawi, Charles, 1988: The Fertile Crescent, 1800-1914. A documentary economic History, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Massignon, Louis, 1953: “La structure du travail à Damas en 1927: Type d’enquête sociographique”, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie 15, p. 34-52.
Milwright, Marcus, 2009: “Written sources and the study of pottery in Ottoman Bilad al-Sham”, al-Rafidan 30, p. 37-52.
Milwright, Marcus 2011: “On the date of Paul Kahle’s Egyptian shadow puppets”, Muqarnas 28, p. 43-68.
Milwright, Marcus, 2012: “Metalworking in Damascus at the End of the Ottoman Period: An Analysis of the Qāmūs al-ṣināʿāt al-Shāmiyya”, in Venetia Porter & Mariam Rosser-Owen (dir.), Metalwork and Material Culture in the Islamic World. Art, craft and text, London & New York, I.B. Tauris, p. 265-280.
Naval Intelligence Division (NID), 1943a: Syria, London, British Admiralty (April 1943) (Geographical Handbook Series B.R. 513).
Naval Intelligence Division (NID), 1943b: Palestine and Transjordan, London, British Admiralty (December 1943) (Geographical Handbook Series B.R. 514).
Nyrop, Richard, et al. 1971: Area Handbook for Syria, Washington DC, U.S. Government Printing Office.
Pascual, Jean-Paul, 1995: “Meubles et objets domestiques quotidiens des intérieurs damascains du xviie siècle”, Villes au Levant: Hommage André Raymond. Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Mediterranée 55-56, p. 197-207.
Qaddumi, Ghada, 1996: trans and annotated, The Book of Gifts and Rarities: Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-Tuḥaf, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 30, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press.
Qasaṭilī, Nuʿmān, 1876: al-Rawḍat al-ġannāʼ fī Dimašq al-fayḥāʼ, Beirut (reprinted 1983).
Qāsimī (al-), Muhammad Saʿid (al-), al-Qāsimī (al-), Ǧamāl al-Dīn, ʿAẓm (al-), Ḫalīl, 1960: Dictionnaire des métiers damascains, ed. Z. al-Qāsimī, 2 vol., Paris & Le Haye, Mouton and Co (Le Monde d’Outre-Mer passé et présent. Deuxième série. Documents III).
Qudsī, Ilyas, 1885: “Notice sur les corporations de Damas”, Actes du sixième Congres International des Orientalistes, Leiden, Brill, vol. II, p. 7-34 (Arabic text with introduction by Carlo Landberg).
Robinson, Rebecca, 1985: “Tobacco pipes of Corinth and the Athenian Agora”, Hesperia 54, p. 149-203.
Serjeant, R. B., 1980: “Social stratification in Arabia”, in Robert B. Serjeant (ed.): The Islamic City: Selected Papers from the Colloquium held at the Middle East Centre, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge, United Kingdom, from 19 to 23 July 1976, Paris, UNESCO, p. 126-147.
Simpson, St John, 1995: “An ordeal with a pipe: Changing attitudes to smoking in the Near East during the 17th and 18th centuries”, Society of Clay Pipe Research Newsletter 47, p. 17-22.
Singer, Lynette (ed.), 2008: The Minbar of Saladin: Reconstructing a Jewel of Islam, New York, Thames and Hudson.
Stowasser, Karl & Ani, Moukhtar (eds.), 2004: A Dictionary of Syrian Arabic: English-Arabic, Washington DC, Georgetown University Press (Georgetown Classics in Arabic Language and Linguistics).
Whitehouse, David, 2001: “East Africa and the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean, A.D. 800-1500”, in Bianca Amoretti (dir.), Islam in east Africa: New Sources, Rome, p. 411-424.
Wulff, Hans, 1966: The Traditional Crafts of Persia: Their Development, Technology, and Influence on Eastern and Western Civilizations, Cambridge MA, MIT Press.
Ziadeh, Nicola, 1964: Damascus under the Mamlūks, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press.
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Notes
Hillenbrand 1999.
Allan and Abu Khalaf 2000; Flood 2000.
Auld 2009a and 2009b. On the new minbar, see contributions in Singer 2008.
Bloom 2009.
On the date and authorship of the work, see Zāfir al-Qāsimī’s notes in the French introduction in volume 1 of the published edition. Qāmūs, I, p. 13-15 (French text). Also Commins 1990, p. 86.
Ṣināʿa and ḥirfa are generally used in the Qāmūs to describe crafts or activities. These words could also carry the sense of a more formally constituted guild, however. For instance, Elias al-Qudsi’s discussion of the history and structure of the guilds of Damascus describes them as ḥirfa (Qudsi 1885). In 19th-century Egypt ṣināʿa and ḥirfa had largely replaced the traditional words used to describe guilds (ṭarīq, ṭarīqa, and ṭāʼifa). See Baer 1964, p. 16-17.
For the crafts still operating in 1927, see Massignon 1953.
Muḥammad Saʿīd al-Qāsimī was a Šafiʿi jurist who served as preacher in the Ḥasan and Sināniyya Mosques of the city, and also taught in the latter. His son, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, was also educated in the Šāfiʿī school, and took over his father’s posts at the Sināniyya mosque in 1900. From the 1890s until his death in 1914 Ǧamāl al-Dīn was affiliated to Salafism and championed the adoption of new (Western) technology in Islamic culture. His writings made him an influential figure among the group of Syrian radicals often known today as the Arabists. See Commins 1990, p. 42-46.
For a recent study of ḥisba as a source for the study of Islamic crafts, see Ghabin 2009.
Wulff 1966; Floor 2006. I will also refer to the discussion of woodworking in Pierre Bazantay’s (Bazantay 1936, p. 20-24) study of the crafts of Antioch.
For Syrian dialect words I have consulted Stowasser and Ani 2004. Where the meaning and/or the precise vowelling of an Arabic term are unclear, I have marked the word with a question mark.
Milwright 2009 and 2012.
The production of underglaze-painted stonepaste wares had ceased by the late 19th century. This sort of high quality decorated pottery often required imported glaze colours and other materials. This is well illustrated in the treatise written by the Persian craftsman, Abū l-Qāsim. Translated with extensive annotations in Allan 1973.
The total value of the metals (copper, iron, tin, lead, and zinc) imported into the wilāya of Syria from Europe is given as 2,500,000 francs. See Cuinet 1896, p. 67-68, 380; Milwright 2012, p.166.
Ziadeh 1964, p. 46.
Bowring 1973, p. 10-13, 66, 68, 114. The report offers an estimate of 40,000 oak and mountain pine trees felled annually, mainly for use in ship-building.
Cuinet 1896. His observations correlate well with data provided in British Naval Intelligence reports for Syria (NID 1943a, p. 87-98; 273-75, 407-11); and Palestine and Transjordan (NID 1943b, p. 61-78). It seems likely that the extent of the woodlands of areas such as the Anti-Lebanon mountains was much reduced by the second half of the 20th century. Considerable cutting of wood was underaken by the Turkish army during World War I. See Naval Intelligence Division 1943a, p. 273; Nyrop et al. 1971, p. 15-16.
Cuinet 1896, p. 324-25.
Cuinet 1896, p. 28-29.
Cuinet 1896, p. 588.
Ahsan 1979, p. 176, 179-80. Other references to teak as a building material may be found in Qaddumi 1996, paragraphs 162, 268 (p. 150-54, 198-99).
Goitein 1983, p. 114, 131. There is also a reference to an incense burner made of ebony decorated with silver (see 137).
Whitehouse 2001, p. 416-417. For references to wood in house construction in other regions of the Islamic East, see Ahsan 1979, p. 180.
Whitehouse 2001, p. 415.
Al-Ṯaʿalibī 1968, p. 139, 142. The best specimens of this fine-grained wood were from the region of Tabaristan, and were often made into large bowls (ġaḍāra). See Ahsan 1979, p. 124.
Qaddumi 1996, paragraphs 2, 29, 39 (p. 62, 73, 80-81) et passim. On the burning of aloes-wood as a domestic incense, see Goitein 1983, 138.
Ibn Ǧubayr, Riḥla, p. 262-63. Also: Auld 2009a, p. 72.
Qāmūs, p. 482 (chapter 412).
Bowring 1973, p. 36. Also p. 122. A Syrian qinṭār=256.4 kg. Beirut was also taking consignments of brazil wood. A record from 1813 gives the price of this commodity as 550 piastres per qinṭār. See Ismail 1975-83, iii, p. 111.
Bowring 1973, p. 46.
Bowring 1973, p. 135 (appendix D).
Bowring 1973, p. 46.
Ismail 1982-93, i, p. 377 (the consular document is dated 7 March 1835).
Ismail 1982-93, vi, p. 334.
Qāmūs, p. 384 (chapter 310).
Qāmūs, p. 359 (chapter 283). Translated in Milwright 2011, p. 61-62.
Qāmūs, p. 428 (chapter 350).
Qāmūs, p. 52 (chapter 19).
Qāmūs, p. 481-82 (chapter 412).
Qāmūs, p. 116-17 (chapter 79).
Qāmūs, p. 481. In the chapter devoted to the maker of needles (abbār), it is noted that, with the decline of demand for handmade needle, their market, known as the Sūq al-Abbārīn, had closed down and had been replaced by warehouses for wood and other items. See Qāmūs, p. 215 (chapter 142). In the Medieval period the wood merchants (ḫaššābīn) operated in the intramural area of Kušk, between Straight street and Bāb Kīsān, see Élisséeff 1956, p. 68, no15.
This saw could be three cubits or more in length.
Wulff 1966, p. 79, fig. 112.
Bowring 1973, p. 13.
On this technique, see also: Wulff 1966, p. 80; Floor 2006, p. 162. Wulff notes that the thread would be coloured with a red powder made from hematite (iron oxide) or a yellow one made from limonite brought from Armenia.
These two villages are located north of Damascus on the road to Saydnaya.
The words used here are: daff, ṭabaq, and usṭuwāna.
Qāmūs, p. 270 (chapter 194).
Qāmūs, p. 478-79 (chapter 407). Cf. Bazantay 1936, p. 21-22; Wulff 1966, p. 80-90; Floor 2006, p. 162-66.
The authors also give another term, al-ṭawāna, that I have been unable to decipher. Perhaps this is a reference to the wooden frames (carcass) of houses that are then filled in with bricks or rammed earth? Cf. Bazantay 1936, p. 21, pl. 4 (top).
The wheelwright appears to have been a distinct activity in Iran. See Wulff 1966, p. 88-90 (with a detailed list of the vocabulary employed for different elements of a cart). See also Bazantay 1936, p. 22.
The translation of the other terms listed in this section is unclear, though they all appear to be connected to agriculture.
Qāmūs, p. 489-90 (chapter 423).
Bazantay 1936, p. 23-24.
On the activities of the digger of canals (qanawātī), see Qāmūs, p. 364-65 (chapter 292).
Qāmūs, p. 122 (chapter 86). Cf. Bazantay 1936, p. 22.
On the makers of narghiles, see Qāmūs, p. 37 (chapter 5).
Bazantay 1936, p. 22; Wulff 1966, p. 90-92; Floor 2006, p. 166-68. European travellers to Iran did not that the fairly simple technology employed by Persian turners did not allow them to create ovoid shapes. See John Chardin quoted in Floor 2006, p. 166.
Qāmūs, p. 348-49 (chapter 271).
On the suyūrī, see Qāmūs, p. 242-43 (chapter 167).
The traditional Circassian district of Šarkasiyya is located directly south of al-Muhāǧirīn.
Qāmūs, p. 265 (chapter 189).
Qāmūs, p. 271-72 (chapter 196). Cf. Bazantay 1936, p. 20-21 and pl. 6; Wulff 1966, p. 87-88.
The precise meaning is indicated later in the chapter where it is stated that clothes were hung inside the ḫizāna. On the Persian makers of trunks and chests, see Floor 2006, p. 170-71.
The chapter employs the phrase, ʿāla ḥadīdiyya, but it seems likely that the tools of the ṣanādiqī were made of steel. The discussion of metalworking in the Qāmūs makes no use of the Arabic word for steel (fūlāḏ), making the distinctions between iron and steel objects fairly apparent by context. See Milwright 2012, p. 266, 273-276.
For a more detailed discussion of inlay technique, see Wulff 1966, p. 92-97. Also Floor 2006, p. 172-73.
Qāmūs, p. 318 (chapter 238).
In Medieval Damascus the ʿulabī had a market on Straight Street near to al-Masallāt. See Élisséeff 1956, p. 73 no. 44.
Qāmūs, p. 356 (chapter 280). For a photograph of the drilling of a pipe stem in Iran, see Wulff 1966, p. 92, fig. 135.
Qāmūs, p. 330 (chapter 252). This chapter is translated in: Issawi 1988, p. 389-90; and Milwright 2009, p. 43-44. Issawi is, however, mistaken in his identification of the ġalyūn as a water pipe; the description in the Qāmūs makes clear that it is a chibouk. On the study of Ottoman-period tobacco pipes, see Robinson 1985; Simpson 1995; Baram 2000; Milwright 2000, p. 199-200.
Amber (kahrabāʼ), gold and silver are mentioned specifically in the chapter devoted to the ġalāyīnī. See Qāmūs, p. 330. On these and other materials, see Robinson 1985, p. 151-56; Simpson 1995.
Ismail 1975-1983, iii, p. 113 (4,000 cherry wood pipes valued at 12,000 piastres exported from Beirut to Malta, Tunis, Damietta, and Cyprus in 1813).
Mother-of-pearl inlay is mentioned in the discussion of the ġalāyīnī. See Qāmūs, p. 330; Milwright 2009, p. 43-44.
This may be translated as «nipple of the cigarette». Bazz is also the name for a type of cloth sold in Damascus.
Cf. Qāmūs, p. 330 (chapter 252). See also: Baram 2000, p. 152; Milwright 2009, p. 43-47. The habit of smoking cigarettes was observed in Aleppo in the 1850s. See al-Ġazzī, Naḥr, p. 87.
In his ḥisba manual, the 14th-century jurist, Ibn al-Uḫuwwa, states that the only wood suitable for combs was Greek box wood. He also condones the use of tortoiseshell for this purpose. See Ibn al-Uḫuwwa, Maʿālim, p. 91 (English text), 280 (Arabic text).
Qāmūs, p. 444 (chapter 367). Cf. Bazantay 1936, p. 22-23, pl. 14. Bazantay notes that combs would also be made from bone or the horns of sheep and goats. A comb maker could produce 100 combs in a twelve-hour day, for a profit of 4 francs. The combs made in Antioch were exported to the villages of Northern Syria, Palestine, and Egypt.
The sentence dealing with the prices of combs seems to indicate that the cost for a dirham (weight) from sixty pāra and two piasters.
Wulff 1966, p. 99-100, fig. 148-49. By the mid 20th century the Persian comb makers were finding themselves unable to compete with cheap plastic combs.
Qāmūs, p. 472 (chapter 400). The chapter does not provide a physical description, though they presumably corresponded to the types described by Wulff in Iran, in which the upper and lower sections were made of sheets of wood, with the leather bellows contained between them. He notes that their craft was facing competition from (imported?) foot pumps. See Wulff 1966, p. 101.
Qāmūs, p. 256 (chapter 177).
Qāmūs, p. 238 (chapter 160).
Qāmūs, p. 468 (chapter 392).
Qāmūs, p. 386-387 (chapter 312). Cf. Floor 2006, p. 160-162. On the woodcutters operating in the forests around Alexandretta in the 1830s, see Bowring 1973, p. 10-13.
Qāmūs, p. 99-100 (chapter 66).
Qāmūs, p. 336 (chapter 257).
The same situation probably pertained all over Syria. The estimated annual production of charcoal in Syria through the 1930s was 1,200 tonnes. See Naval Intelligence Division 1943a, p. 275.
Pascual 1990, p. 199-201.
Qāmūs, p. 215 (chapter 142), 422-23 (chapter 343). On these crafts, see Milwright 2009, p. 41; 2012, p. 275-276.
Qasaṭilī 1876, p. 161.
Many of the woodworking crafts described in the Qāmūs were still operating in the city in 1927. See Massignon 1953, p. 48-49.
See data collected in: Issawi 1988, p. 89-91. The range is between about 150% and 300% of a labourer’s wage. The latest entry to contain information on carpenters deals with the situation in Beirut in 1886. At this time both masons and carpenters received 16-26 piasters per day and labourers 11-17 piasters. For the wages of woodcutters, trimmers, transporters of timber, and sawyers in the 1830s, see Bowring 1973, p. 11-13.
Qāmūs, p. 239 (chapter 162), 93-94 (chapter 58). On the social status of metalworking, see also Milwright 2012, p. 277.
On the social status of urban crafts, see Serjeant 1980.
Woodworkers must also have made and decorated (often with mother-of-pearl inlay) the butts of rifles. For examples of 19th-century pistols and rifles made in the Middle East, see Elgood 1995, fig. 1, 2, 6, 14-24, 29-31.
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